This is what I plan to make for an event in late springtime/early summer. I have this great silk kimono fabric that I got for free from a teacher, so I thought I would use it to make this dress (there's no way I could make a kimono on my own!).

The only problem: strapless dresses constantly fall down on me because I don't have a large bust to hold them up! So I thought I would solve that problem by making a corset to go underneath the dress, then just bind the corset and dress together at the top hem. I even found a blog of someone who did the very same thing! It makes me feel a little less like I'm doing this an entirely wrong way... but if anyone has any suggestions of a better way to keep strapless dresses up without constant readjustment, please let me know in the comments section!

(The outline of the model used in this picture is from the following website: http://www.eightcowwife.com/files/1564145/uploaded/fashion%20design%20sketch%20woman%20outline.jpg)

Notes on "Narratives of Nation Building in Korea: A Genealogy of Patriotism", a book by Sheila Miyoshi Jager

“It [this book] reveals how the emergence of the nation, linked to the rise of the modern capitalist world system, transformed the ways in which Koreans perceived themselves as gendered beings. […] By conceptualizing gender in terms of the reciprocally constituted and historically variable categories of Man and Woman, my interest is to show how ender systems are reciprocally related, in multiple and shifting ways, to other modes of cultural, political, aesthetic organization and experience.” (ix)

“The problem with postcolonial formulations of ID is that they are raised only in conformity to two basic binary modes: pure native ‘self-understanding’ versus the ‘contaminated’ IDs brought about by the cultural appropriation of the Other (‘almost the same but not quite’ [from Bhabba]). Of course, the notion of ‘pure self-understanding’ is a myth, since most cultures and societies around the world have long been ‘contaminated’ way before Western ships ever reached their shores.” (x)

“What I hope to make clear in my study of nationalism in Korea is that ideas or ideological concepts, whether they stem from politically ‘dominant’ or ‘subordinate’ cultures or groups, are never intrinsically oppressive or liberation in themselves. The significance of the loyal wife as a symbol of either traditional oppression or potential liberation/reunification, for example, depends upon the unexpected usages to which these images are put. […] Nation and nationalism have always drawn upon narratives about progress and civilization, but ppl w/ very different political agendas often deploy these same narratives in a variety of ways and for very diff. ideological ends.” (xv)

and

So, I've decided to make a corset for my Poison Ivy costume, and here's a picture of the mock-up that I hand-sewed. It was pretty tedious, but good practice, I suppose! It was completed in 6 days, and there's makeshift boning made of cardboard in the channels because I didn't want to buy anything in Japan, only to have to lug it back home.

I've decided that I'm going to be Poison Ivy from Batman for Halloween this year. Too early to think about Halloween? Not in the least! Halloween's my favorite holiday, and it's been my unfortunate... luck... to miss the past two years. (Yeah right, it's more like I procrastinated finishing a paper the first year, and didn't plan in advance for the second year!) Anyway, I simply cannot miss Halloween my last year in college, so I've begun planning so far in advance in order to smooth out or avoid any problems that might arise.

So... Poison Ivy. Well, here's my list of what I'm going to do:
- Get red hair wig or dye hair red
- Large barrel hot rollers
- Foam for eyebrow leaf detail + spirit gum for application (do NOT put on your eyebrows!)
- Eye shadow (sparkles?)
- lipstick (bright red)
- nail polish (bright red)
- Corset (use the underbust pattern Laurel helped you make), necessary materials follow:
➢ Darker green coitil (whatever that stiff fabric is for corset making)
➢ Pattern (the one Laurel made)
➢ Ivy leaves (4 bunches or more) (put darker leaves at edges of garment, and lighter ones around the middle) (maybe some red leaves, for bra accent?)
➢ boning (just use heavy-duty zip ties from hardware stores and double/triple them up for each bone)
➢ grommets
➢ Laces
➢ Bias tape (for finishing the edges of the corset) (*you can also make your own out of leftover fabric)
➢ Hot glue gun + hot glue (for the leaves, provided you’re not sewing them on)
- Gloves that reach up to your biceps (same light green as stockings if you can find them; if not, buy white then dye them a greenish color)
- Ivy leaves for wrapping around your legs/arms OR for tacking onto the stockings w/ thread (then cover with clear nail polish so the holes won’t stretch + tear open)
- Dried small white flowers to hot glue to hairpins and stick in hair/wig
- bikini-style underwear (preferably dark green), glue with leaves (yes, glue it! This will make the backside of it stiff so that it won’t ride up?) + wear w/ corset (*危ない：do NOT attach underwear to corset)

Completed Tasks:
- Shoes (high-heeled, green)
- Tights (1 pair pastel green + 1 pair fishnet with rose details)

There are only really 3 good Poison Ivy cosplays that I've found on the net, and one of them is a goth version, which is a bit too far form the original for me. Plus, I don't want to have to deal with all that makeup! The other version is very do-able, but still looks slightly homemade. The absolute best version I've found is this person's:




Since one of my friends, Laurel, taught me how to make an underbust corset, I figure that I'll just do that, throw on some underwear and a bra, then cover them all in ivy leaves so you can't see the connecting parts. Hopefully, it'll end up looking something like the cosplay of the woman above!

The tights I've got so far are below:

Before I forget, the quote in this entry's title is from "The Producers".


Recently, I've been posting some pictures of my entire family online for them to see, but I've found myself hesitating at times. "It's okay if I post this one of mom with dad, right?" or "She won't get depressed if I put this one of her up, even though it was when she was pretty big, yeah?" are questions that've popped up in my head recently.

The following is the reason why. Before I even began posting these, mom commented on a few of my pictures from last summer writing, "these are my old, fat pictures!" or something similar. Since the comments annoyed me, I deleted them. I don't care if it's rude. Why would I want to have my mom display her new self-confidence on my FB? It's okay if she does that on her own, but to put that on mine, it's like she's ashamed of how she used to look, when the thought never even crossed my mind. Somehow, in showing her dislike for her old shape, I feel as though she's showing dislike for everything that went with that shape. All the years she took care of my sisters and I, my entire childhood!

Maybe I'm just taking it to an extreme, but damn, I wish she wouldn't denigrate earlier pictures of herself... I've loved her since I was a baby with that shape and I found nothing wrong with it other than that maybe her health was at risk. Maybe it's me who's just too concerned with shape. I mean, I'll support her in her weight loss, but I feel like true confidence won't come until one just accepts oneself.

...Maybe I should listen to my own advice before I apply it to others.

Watch "Meet Joe Black".

http://briarpatchmagazine.com/boy-code-and-the-modern-man/

"A May 2003 study in the American Journal of Public Health concludes that the modern concept of masculinity is killing men: “What are the factors for the higher rates of morbidity and mortality among men? Beliefs about masculinity and manhood . . . play a role. . . . Men are socialized to project strength, individuality, autonomy, dominance, stoicism and physical aggression, and to avoid demonstrations of emotion or vulnerability that could be construed as weakness. These cultural orientations . . . combine to increase health risks.” "

"With the rise of feminism, gender roles will inevitably continue to change. In recent decades many women have found their voice, and many men have gotten more in touch with their emotions. However, the old paradigms remain surprisingly strong, and in the militaristic, post-9/11 world are even gaining strength. As William Pollack has pointed out, even boys coming from “enlightened” neighborhoods still learn patriarchy’s rulebook at an early age. And this Boy Code is what still leaves most men “half of a crippled whole.” " <-- this is EXACTLY what people have been saying for a few hundred years! There was someone, I think she was French, who posited the very same concept in the 18th or 19th century.

The only problem I had with this analysis was this sentence:
"As boys, we dare friends to punch us in the stomach and then pretend it doesn’t hurt."
It wasn't only boys who did meaningless stuff like that! I remember that when I was around 12 years old, my mother was perplexed after I asked one of my sisters to punch me because "I'd forgotten how it felt to get the wind knocked out of me." I can see now how it was pretty weird to request such a thing, but at the time I was really curious.


http://contexts.org/socimages/2008/05/24/onslaught-dove-vs-axe/
This article (far shorter than the one posted above!) is really interesting. The author talks briefly about how Dove's "Campaign for Real Beauty" directly opposes Axe's sexist advertisements. Note that Axe and Dove are owned by the same company, Unilever!

"That is, Dove is telling parents to protect their kids, as if Dove CARES, but Dove’s parent company is producing those very same messages. (It’s kind of like a single corporation owning a beer company and running Alcoholics Anonymous. How very convenient for both.)"

A user posted a great comment on this, writing,
"A company selling both Axe Ego Spray and Dove Enlightenment Soap is not being contradictory or hypocritical because the only purpose of the existence of that (or any) corporation is Growth and Profit, period. [...] Feeding or even creating a conflict is in their financial interests because they manufacture the paraphernalia for both sides of it."
This user's comparison of the Dove/Axe conflict to real-life wars seems quite fitting. With war comes profits, bottom line.


http://briarpatchmagazine.com/strange-bedfellows/
This one's an interview of the creator of the Feminist Porn Awards. She owns a sex shop in Toronto.

My dream (night of Feb. 12, 2010, after going to an all you can eat/drink party with a club I'm in. No, I wasn't drunk; when you buy all you can drink passes at a restaurant, they barely put any alcohol in the drinks!):

I was online, and I stumbled across a site full of old short stories. I started reading one of a Native American girl who was being chased by these two guys, and she was afraid she was gonna be caught and raped because she couldn't outrun them due to the horrible cancer she had in her throat (caused by the tainted river water on the reservation that the government shoved her people on) that was sapping her strength. Luckily, she ran into some other Indian guy who was bigger than the two boys following her, and he told them to leave. I wanted to read the rest of the story, but then I clicked accidentally on another link that took me away from it. I frantically tried to find the story again, because 1) i wanted to read more of it, and 2) I wanted to send the site to Ms. Turner, my social studies/hist. teacher from HS, but I just couldn't find it. Oh, and I forgot to mention, the story was written by Charles Dickens...

Then I went downstairs or something to find that a performance was taking place on the 1st floor of the inn I was staying in. The members of Korn were freestyle rapping, narrating some picture book that had no words, and was just full of pictures of evil and good people fighting. Then, finally after the main guy gave up ("Man, I can't rap this shit anymore on the spot!"), one of the other members of the group and he started competing for a middle-aged woman's attentions.

After that, I dreamed that my oldest sister, Mom, and I were making dinner for after Kori's wedding (we were gonna have a little dinner party with the new family), and Mom overdid the chicken breast in the oven (she'd been out at Wegmans, and had forgotten to tell one of us to take it out earlier), so we decided to shred it and put it in soup, instead. My sister was all frustrated with Mom, and Mom was arguing with my sister, and I was the one who came up with the soup compromise, in the end. I don't really know where Kori was during all this! Mom mentioned that we were gonna have too many dishes to fit in my sister's dishwasher, and that we'd have to clean some by hand (using her tone, you know, the one that means, "there's nothing we can do about it!"), I just answered "yeah, fine, I'm used to cleaning all my dishes by hand anyway at my homestay."

Annnnnnddddd, that was the end of my dream.